“Tariq Ramadan differs a bit from militant Islam, at least in method, although not in the final outcome; both are all about Islamic dominance. Tariq Ramadan opposes the Muslims’ use of violence in Europe because in the long run violence might be devastating to the prospect of Euroislam…. Euroislam is the vision of Islam’s religious and political dominance over Europe.”
Kirsten Sarauw in the Kristeligt Dagblad, 11 January 2008
Translation: Gates of Vienna
“Over the past year or so the rural Italian idyll of Colle di Val d’Elsa has played host to a bitter battle for Enlightenment values. On one side, the hamlet’s small Muslim community has raised a considerable amount of money to build a large mosque. Having gained the mayor’s approval, the Muslims signed a declaration of cooperation with the town hall and even planted a Christmas tree at the site as a good-will gesture.
“In response, other locals pelted them with sausages and dumped a severed pig’s head at the site. On a wall near the site vandals daubed: ‘No Mosque’, ‘Christian Hill’ and ‘Thanks to the communists the Arabs are in our house!!!’ Such is the central dynamic in European race relations at present.
“… the primary threat to democracy in Europe is not ‘Islamofascism’ – that clunking, thuggish phrase that keeps lashing out in the hope that it will one day strike a meaning – but plain old fascism. The kind whereby mostly white Europeans take to the streets to terrorize minorities in the name of racial, cultural or religious superiority.”
Gary Younge in the Nation, 20 December 2007
COPENHAGEN, Denmark — Raving xenophobe or fearless defender of Danish values? Nationalist leader Pia Kjaersgaard’s anti-Muslim outbursts have earned her many labels — and many votes.
Despite predictions of her populist Danish People’s Party’s demise, Kjaersgaard remains a powerful force in domestic politics after winning 14 percent of the vote in last week’s election.
“The most important thing for the Danish People’s Party is to maintain the Danish identity,” Kjaersgaard, 60, told The Associated Press in an interview. “I am convinced that the Islamists want to sneak Sharia (Islamic law) through the back door, that they want to combat Western society and they want Islam to become the main religion,” she said.
Her party — Denmark’s third biggest — has held the role of kingmaker since 2001, giving the center-right government the backing it needs for a majority in Parliament. In return, Kjaersgaard has been able to press the government to adopt some of Europe’s strictest immigration laws, which she says have been instrumental in stemming the inflow of Muslims with radical views.
There are an estimated 200,000 Muslims among Denmark’s 5.4 million residents.
“The individual Muslim has never been a problem for Danish society. But their number has,” Kjaersgaard told AP in her office, decorated with Danish flags and paintings depicting Danish landscapes. To emphasize her point, she said she shops at a grocery store owned by a Turkish Kurd who respects Danish laws and culture. “He has a lot of great stuff — fruits, vegetables — and he’s a good friend of mine,” Kjaersgaard said.
The flow of asylum-seekers has dropped by 84 percent since Denmark tightened its immigration laws in 2001. There is now broad agreement across party lines to maintain the system.
But critics say the Danish People’s Party has polarized Danish society by bashing Islam and stereotyping immigrants as welfare cheats. “She is a scare-mongering populist and opportunist,” said Holger K. Nielsen of the left-wing opposition Socialist People’s Party. He added Kjaersgaard was a skillful politician who has tapped into undercurrents of nationalism and worries over immigration among Danes.
During last year’s uproar over Danish caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, Kjaersgaard and other leading party members took turns blasting Islam as incompatible with Danish traditions including free speech. Ahead of the Nov. 13 election, one of the party’s campaign posters showed an artist’s hand drawing a picture of Muhammad, with the text “Freedom of speech is Danish, censorship is not.”
COPENHAGEN — The Danish government’s far-right ally in parliament has made immigration, especially by Muslims, its main target of attacks ahead of next week’s legislative elections. In its election campaign for the November 13 poll, the Danish People’s Party (DPP) blasts Muslim immigrants for not respecting Danish traditions and for taking advantage of the Scandinavian country’s generous welfare system.
One poster shows a woman wearing a Muslim headscarf withdrawing money from a cash dispenser machine drawn with the logo of the welfare benefits office, with the caption: “Make demands on the foreigners. Now they must contribute!”. Another shows a group of veiled women under the headline: “Follow the country’s traditions and customs or leave.”
In a third poster, the party makes reference to the crisis sparked by the publication of caricatures of Prophet Mohammed in a Danish newspaper two years ago. The global row that followed lasted months and included attacks on Danish embassies, the burning of the country’s flag and boycotts of its products across the Muslim world. The poster shows a hand drawing the Prophet Mohammed, over the words: “Freedom of expression is Danish. Censorship is not. Defend Danish values.”
Therkel Straede, a Holocaust expert at Syddansk University, compared the party’s tactics to those used by the Nazis during World War II. “The DPP is not Nazi, but its ideology, with its xenophobic extreme nationalism, resembles Nazism, since it tries to stamp out a minority,” he said.
Two days after the government called snap elections for November 13, the DPP presented a series of law proposals aimed at Muslim immigrants, including bans on using the Muslim headscarf in public places and on special worship areas for Muslims in the workplace. The party also called for a ban on halal meat in daycare centres and on special locker rooms for Muslim schoolgirls.
“There is every reason to tighten the screws, because Danish values are under pressure,” said deputy head of the party Peter Skaarup, insisting that “these demands will at the end of the day be beneficial to the integration of immigrants.”
During the general elections in February 2005, the DPP won 13.3 percent of the votes, or 24 seats, making it the third-largest party in parliament and allowing it to wield significant influence on Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen’s Liberal-Conservative coalition government.
A far-right Danish political party controversially depicted the prophet Muhammad on election material yesterday. Now a high-profile Danish-Muslim politician has hit back with a poster lampooning the move.
The ad by the Danish People’s Party, the country’s third largest political force, showed a hand-drawn picture of the Islamic prophet under the slogan “Freedom of expression is Danish, censorship is not”. The ad was condemned as a “provocation” by at least one Danish-Muslim group, as Islam forbids representation of its most important prophet.
Now Asmaa Abdol-Hamid, a Danish-Muslim politician who could become the first MP to wear the hijab in the Danish parliament if elected in next month’s poll, has hit back with a poster showing a hand-drawn picture of the DPP leader, Pia Kjaersgaard, under the slogan “Freedom of expression is Danish, stupidity is not”.
Denmark: rightwing populists incite rise in xenophobia
From Anne Jessen for Demos and Antifa-Net in Copenhagen
Searchlight, October 2007
INTOLERANCE TOWARDS Muslims in Denmark is growing according to several recent reports that strongly criticise the government’s policies towards immigrants, refugees and ethnic minorities.
At the beginning of 2006 Denmark’s image took a battering as Muslim protests against the publication in a Danish newspaper of cartoons of Muhammad dominated the international news. Since then the media spotlight has turned away and the Danish government’s hard line on ethnic minorities has resumed. Although the country is governed by a liberal-conservative coalition, the rightwing populist Danish People’s Party (DFP) wields decisive influence over immigration policy.
Amnesty International’s annual report published this summer emphasises that ethnic minority groups suffer discrimination, especially Muslims, and points out that since the cartoons controversy the number of politically motivated attacks on Muslims has increased but this has not been matched by charges brought for violating anti-racism laws.
Amnesty’s report confirmed the findings of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, which commented in a report issued in March this year that the Danish jobs market discriminates against foreigners. It said that Denmark has the lowest proportion of employed immigrants out of all the OECD’s 30 member states and that the education system has failed the younger generation of immigrants.
The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe also censured the Danish government over the situation of Muslims in Denmark in a report prepared in July 2006 but only reported in the Danish media in April. The report’s author, Ömür Orhun, pointed out that the situation of Muslims in Denmark has worsened over the past five years. He criticised the radical aliens legislation, which limits the access of Muslims to the social security system, and blamed the government for the absence of legal mosques and Muslim cemeteries, the requirement for newborn Muslim children to be registered with the Christian church and the fact that anti-racism legislation is rarely enforced.
In May last year the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) expressed its anxiety at increasing xenophobia and intolerance towards Muslims in Denmark. ECRI’s report pointed out that DFP members are able to make shockingly racist statements in public without political or legal consequences.
Both the Danish government and the DFP consistently reject criticism of their positions. Mogens Camre, a DFP Member of the European Parliament, unhesitatingly spells out his agenda: “We must quit the refugee convention of the UN, we must block the civil rights embodied by the European Union charter which are directed against Europeans and we must amend the legal and penal codes to make it possible to defend democracy and throw political-religious leaders, criminals and parasites out of the country.”
The Little Mermaid statue in Denmark’s capital was found draped in Muslim dress and a head scarf Sunday morning, police said. After receiving a telephone call, officers drove to the site and removed the garments, said Copenhagen police spokesman Jorgen Thomsen.
The Little Mermaid was created by Danish sculptor Edvard Eriksen in tribute to Danish storyteller Hans Christian Andersen. Sitting on a rock at the entrance of Copenhagen harbor since 1913, she draws an estimated 1 million visitors a year, and is occasionally targeted by vandals.
She has been beheaded and doused in paint several times. Four years ago, the statue was blown off its perch by vandals who used explosives. In 2004, someone put a burqa, the head-to-toe Islamic robe, on the statue along with a sign saying “Turkey in the EU?” in reference to Turkey’s bid to join the European Union.
So, pretty obviously another right-wing protest against Islam, you might think? Not according to one blogger, who reports the incident under the heading “Muslim THUGS Deface Famous Hans Christian Andersen Statue – Again“.
The Danish People’s Party wants a total ban on veils in Denmark, but both the opposition and the government don’t support it. Pia Kjærsgaard, leader of the Danish People’s Party, said in an interview: “I want the headscarf to be completely banned in Danish society. It is oppressive and I cannot tolerate it.” She suggested to start with schools and institutions. Kjærsgaard is not talking about Jewish skullcaps and Christian crosses, saying they’re not the same and are not religious laws. According to a survey 46% of Danes support a ban on veils in schools.
The Guardian profiles Asmaa Abdol-Hamid.
Jakob Illeborg examines the case of Asmaa Abdol-Hamid, who has been denounced by right-wing Danish politicians for stating that she will continue to wear the headscarf if elected to parliament.